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  • economics

    War is bad economics but very good business

    • David James
    • 09 May 2024

    There is money to be made in war, especially from making weapons, and what we are witnessing at the moment in Ukraine and the Middle East is simply the latest episode in a story that goes back centuries.

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  • australia

    Advocating against the wind

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 May 2024

    With the Queensland Government changing the Youth Justice Act, detention of children will no longer be seen as a last resort, causing widespread dismay among youth justice advocates. It invites reflection on what we should expect when we advocate for a cause, ranging from climate change to perceived injustice, and how we should evaluate our efforts.

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  • education

    When does a protest become intimidation?

    • Erica Cervini
    • 08 May 2024

    Echoing their US counterparts, many Australian universities have also set up Gaza solidarity encampments with flags and signs like ‘From the River to The Sea Palestine Will Be Free’. Jewish students and staff have begun telling stories about feeling intimidated on campus.

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  • arts and culture

    Taller when prone: The contradictions of Les Murray

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 10 May 2024

    Les Murray once confessed it was his mission to 'irritate the hell out of the eloquent who would oppress my people,' by being a paradox that their categories can’t assimilate: the Subhuman Redneck who writes poems. And therein lies the ‘poem’ of Les Murray: complex, contradictory, sublime, and sometimes ready to whip his enemies with a scorpion’s tail.

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  • australia

    An old problem, a new conversation

    • David Halliday
    • 06 May 2024

    The national conversation is very much spotlighting domestic violence and violence towards women. As a nation, we need to consider hard questions around the abundant factors within our society with connections to violence. Over three decades, we have made gains, but there’s more work to be done.

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  • economics

    The biggest untold story in the history of money

    • David James
    • 03 May 2024

    It is a truism to say that the way money is constructed defines the power structure under which we live. But allowing private actors to manipulate and game the financial system has not just given them extraordinary power, it has undermined the way money itself is understood.

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  • Sixty-five South

    • Geoff Page
    • 09 May 2024

    Today we leave Antarctic proper; /we’ve seen the penguins and the whales, /the icebergs in their convolutions /and thought about the Age of Sail /whose heroes nosed around down here /sniffing out a sort of fame. /Or was it just the golden oil  /that burned with such a lambent flame?

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  • Courtship rivalry

    • Eddie Hampson
    • 08 May 2024

    What at first appears to be a light-hearted romantic comedy glosses over the dark intensity of Challengers. The tangled and obsessive nature of the relationships within a love triangle mirrors the sport at the centre of Luca Guadagnino's latest. 

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  • Here we are now, entertain us

    • Barry Gittins
    • 01 May 2024

    The raw power of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ blasted Nirvana past the mainstream and into the realm of music immortality. So what was it about Cobain’s music that resonated with young people in the early 90s and continues to find vast audiences 30 years later?

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  • An indelicate balance: Israel and Iran exchange blows

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 May 2024

    For decades, the major powers of Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia have kept a restraint on their hostile engagements, with preference given to battle waged via proxies. A recent Israeli air strike on Iranian offices in Syria and Iran's subsequent attack on Israel with 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles suggested that calculated restraint had been finally abandoned.

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  • Famine looms in Sudan as conflict enters its second year

    • Kirsty Robertson
    • 30 April 2024

    One year after civil war erupted, Sudan has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian tragedies with around 5 million people experiencing emergency levels of hunger. This puts Sudan on the brink of famine. Sudanese leaders claim this is the crisis the world has forgotten.

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  • The road not taken

    • Stephen Yorke
    • 24 April 2024

      On a June day in 1914, a Bosnian nationalist in Sarajevo ignited a chain reaction that reshaped the world. Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old student, did not aim to unleash a global conflict. From the halls of imperial power to the fields of battle, how did the shots fired in Sarajevo echo across continents, drawing empires into disarray and redrawing the map of the modern world? (From 2004)

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  • Thoughts and prayers

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 08 May 2024

    'Thoughts and prayers': Is it now a tired, worn-out cliché, its usefulness questionable? It is now used so many times to render its meaning, its core message, void. Sometimes more than words are needed. 

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  • In constant repair

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 May 2024

    Where would we be without our friends? Good friends sustain us for decades through good times and bad and steer us through periods of change and crisis. One of the many downsides of old age is the loss of friends: they become ill and die. What to do then? How to cope?

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  • Is a child terrorist a victim or perpetrator?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 May 2024

    To identify children as terrorists is a distraction from considering the broader social and psychological contexts that made this violent ideology seem reasonable. The larger task in investigating how they became exposed to that violent ideology, how they were attracted to it, and how they can be drawn away from it.

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  • The Greens, the Church and freedom of religion

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 May 2024

    The relationship between the Catholic church and the Greens has been one marked by near constant antagonism. Are there any consequences from this for either the church or the party?

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  • Where does Infinite Dignity meet finite reality?

    • Bill Uren
    • 24 April 2024

    The recent Vatican declaration 'Dignitas Infinita' aims to provide a response to pressing bioethical and social issues, from abortion and euthanasia to gender theory and the rights of migrants. But does it effectively bridge the gap between doctrine and the lived experiences of the marginalised?  

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  • Vatican invites global discussion on human dignity

    • David Kirchhoffer
    • 18 April 2024
    4 Comments

    Though there are few surprises in Vatican document 'Dignitas Infinita', this summary of Pope Francis’s moral theology on dignity invites a reevaluation of our shared humanity in the face of an increasingly complex ethical landscape.

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